History of a secret

By Mariana Otero

When I learned at the age of 30 that my mother had died of a back-alley abortion, I was stupefied. It was hard to admit that it could have happened to her, that this event was suddenly part of her history, my history and that of my family’s. I couldn’t believe I had lived so long without knowing the real causes of her death. As for many women of my generation, the tragedies linked to abortion belonged to a distant and forgotten past. My stupor turned into revolt and anger. I could not allow that she had died almost illegally, surrounded by shame and secrecy. As the victim of an unfair law, silence had made her a culprit. When I first dared talk about the circumstances of my mother’s death, I realized that other families had been through the same horror and in most cases, secrecy had been maintained, particularly with the children. I had to break the silence. My film had to participate in lifting and destroying once and for all the secrecy within my family to restore its political and social dimension.